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Frens Jan Rumph
Profile: I am a researcher, technical consultant and software engineer based in Holland. I have specialized in Charging, Accounting and Billing architectures. From both a technical point of view (IETF, 3GPP, etc) and a business point of view (TM Forum, GBA).
Main interests: Telecom, Charging, Accounting, Billing, Service Orientation, Software Architectures, Software Engineering
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I do not make any representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.
Furthermore, this is a personal weblog, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
Global Billing, Customer Experience and Revenue Management Initiative
It’s becoming a bit tumultuous in the group previously known as the Global Billing Association. After naming themselves the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative after teaming up with the TM Forum, they have now changed their name into the Revenue Management Initiative.
Although their actions (and probably their vast personal and professional network) define their right of existence, I’m not sure about their new name. I can understand the move to drop the name GBA, although it still is a very strong brand name in my perception, billing on itself is probably setting the scope to narrow. Also the integration within the TM Forum calls for a different name. And while the Billing and Customer Experience Initiative doesn’t really sound that catchy it does align with my perception of the challenges and opportunities in charging and billing.
The bill is traditionally an important part in the communication towards the customer. Yet we still only send a bill once a month and then leave it at that, while one can easily image that service usage and perceived service value can be increased by more direct feedback in relation to the service and the billing relationship. As an example: lack of transparency in the tariff function can unnecessarily be a prohibitive factor in using a service, especially if the service is complex or consumed abroad. But also customer usually will be quite happy to see when he or she can consume or just has consumed a service with a discount or even for free, this is completely different effect then when you see the aggregated discount at the bill at the end of the month!
So for me, charging, billing and settlement is about more then just the monetisation of a service, the usage to cash process. And the term revenue is an operator focused term, and focussing on the operator instead of the customer is not going to keep us in the game when competing with the internet domain…
Al together I hope they (or we actually, due the participation through my employer) can increase the quality of the billing stack in the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map!
Building Marketplaces with Managed Syndicated Services
The TM Forum’s catalyst project ‘Building Marketplaces with Managed Syndicated Services‘ presented its results at Management World 2008 in Nice. The project aims to implement standards-based B/OSS for cross-platform next generation service management’.
The project is sponsored by BT, Microsoft and Telefonica. Further contributions are made by Accenture, CA, Iptivia, Netcracker and Tribold.
The idea of the project is to create a service delivery concept which reassembles SOA service repositories. A service provider exposes a number of services that can be syndicated by a party that combines the services into a new service for the end-user. These syndicated services could be voice or any other multimedia communication services, content services, et cetera.
The project gives the following example, it neatly shows how a service supply chain can be instantiated by syndicating a number of loosely-coupled services:
- A conferencing service is exposed by Service Provider A to be syndicated under three contracts: small, medium and large conference
- A real time video session delivery is exposed by Service Provider B to be syndicated under two contracts: slideware presentation and animated presentation
- A common billing service is exposed by Service Provider C to be syndicated under one contract: detailed charging
- A service aggregator will contract an animated video presentation for a small conference with detailed charging. The service aggregator has the capability to capture events/information related to the health and usage of services provided by SP A and SP B before using SP C for invoicing the end user.”
Phase I of the catalyst project demonstrated the end-to-end product assembly, provisioning and service quality management capabilities ready for service syndication. The next phase, scheduled for the second half of 2008, will include settlements, billing and revenue allocation.
It sounds like a very interesting project; especially the second phase is of particular interest for me personally. I have done some research on similar problems from a charging and billing perspective already in the Ambient Networks project and more recently in an in-house research project within my company. Some of these results have landed in a paper called ‘Accounting, Charging and Billing for Dynamic Service Composition Chains’ which is currently under review for the 17th International Conference on Information Systems Development. This paper gives some views on the changes required on Accounting, Charging and Billing processes and enabling systems in order for them to support service composition similar to the service syndication concept presented in this TM Forum catalyst project.
This project is definitely on my watch list!
Finish 3G bit pipes
Interesting post from the CTO of NMS Communications on a study from the University of Helsinki, Finland on the usage of 3G in Finland, his analysis: ‘3G’s biggest success is as a dumb pipe‘ and we don’t need IMS, GSM over SIGTRAN over IP with an IP/MPLS core network will suffice. Dean Bubley also posted on this on his Disruptive Wireless blog. Dean raises the question: ‘is it really worth bothering about all that complex QoS, prioritisation, differential pricing, IMS etc for the remaining 5%?‘ These discussions are all based on a presentation of Antero Kivi (pdf).
Yes, it might be a bit shocking, perhaps not suprising, it probably was not the vision of 3G initiators years and years ago. But, I disagree that we just need ‘plain old’ IP access for internet with some GSM and SMS stuff on top. Sure, the days of walled gardens and the traditional one-sided telco business models are over. I won’t argue against that, and this is probably a good indication that it is.
But we will need QoS and prioritisation since some services simply have different requirements on the communications network then others and that has a tremendous effect on the QoE (Quality of Experience), which in turn is (IMHO) an important aspect of some of todays and a lot of tomorrows services. We will also need differential pricing. Flat fee will not last for ever, nor will services with a business model purely based on advertising. Perhaps we will see third-party based sponsorships in the near future, which will require differential pricing. And the IMS is an enabler for this. Especially if you combine that with the vision of research projects such as Ambient Networks and the Advanced Multimedia System. The future will tell if telco’s will become/stay bit pipes, I’d say that there are loads of opportunities to being more then that!
Frens Jan Rumph
SIP UA for Android (+stack + RTP) released
Arjun Roychowdhury announced the release of their SIP UA for Android (+stack + RTP), which I just needed to applaud! He a also made a side note that a IMS UA for Android might be expected as well!
Read the announcement at roychowdhury blog
Frens Jan Rumph
SIP on Android
Running SIP on the Android emulator?
Check out:
http://iconverged.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/we-have-sip-working-on-android/
Very good work from those guys, congratulations! They only have the signalling part running, but it’s a start!
This might mean that even though Google is basically an IMS anti-sponsor, that through support of people/companies like these Android phones will support IMS or at least SIP. Fits very well with the architecture of using Intents and Intent Receivers, just set this application to be the Intent Receiver of tel: and sip: uri’s with CALL and DIAL intents and you have a SIP/IMS phone!!! Isn’t that great!
Frens Jan Rumph